Grian Chatten shares new single, ‘All Of The People’, the final track to be lifted from his debut solo album Chaos For The Fly, ahead of its release on 30th June. Written by the Fontaines D.C. frontman and co-produced alongside the band’s longstanding producer Dan Carey, “All Of The People” is a misanthropic exercise in a catharsis which sees Chatten wrestling with his own faith in humanity.
Grian explains: “All of the people is the stiff collar tight-fisted hand to the grindstone written where all is blue and everyone is a liar. It is a line of chalk scratched around the world.”
The track arrives alongside a video directed by Sam Taylor, who previously directed the videos for Fontaines D.C’s “I Love You’” and “Roman Holiday”. Speaking of the video, Taylor explains: “Taking inspiration from Lars Von Trier, George Orwell, and Billy Wilder, our film analyses loneliness, self-doubt then acceptance, appreciation and human connection. We hope it makes you cry happy/sad tears x”.
“All Of The People” is the final of four singles to be lifted from debut album ‘Chaos For The Fly’; following the widespread acclaim for “Last Time Every Time Forever”, “Fairlies’” and “The Score”.
Check out ‘All Of The People’ – BELOW:
Thirty miles north of Dublin, along a windswept promenade, you’ll find a tired casino, the sort of place anyone familiar with the rusted seaside glamour of forgotten coastal towns will recognise. A now-shuttered escape where the crack of pool balls and chink of glasses in the lounge bar reverberated within the ever-present whirr and jangle of slot machines. Unremarkable to some, perhaps, but it was where ‘Chaos For The Fly’ was born.
“I was walking along Stoney Beach at night and it came to me on the waves,” recalls Chatten. “I just stood there and looked at them and I heard the whole fucking thing. Every part of it, from the chord progressions to the string arrangements.”
The resulting songs could have been taken, shaped and reimagined with his bandmates in Fontaines D.C., but Chatten decided to treat these differently.
“I just thought: I want to do this myself. I know where we as a band are going next and that’s not where I want to go with this. I’ve got a couple of exaggerated aspects of my soul that I wanted to express,” he says.
“The rest of the band are all creative and songwriters in their own right, too. I didn’t want to go to them and be like, ‘No, every single thing has to be like this.’ I didn’t want to compromise with these songs in that way.”
The album is the most poetic we’ve heard yet from Chatten. Songs such as the fingerpicking kiss-off of opener “The Score” or “Fairlies”’ wounded isolation present a heavily distilled vision that is heady in its strength and, at times comes with a dark undertow.
“A lot of the album was written with just me and a guitar and I really like the idea of it being boiled down to those elements. That feeling of having the song in the palm of your hand, that control of having it with just you and a guitar,” he says. “There’s an intensity as a result of that.”
Over its nine tracks, ‘Chaos For The Fly’ takes in all of life’s emotions and stories. Yes, some are painful, but in giving shape and form to them and making those voices come alive, Chatten has created something with its own unique beauty. A place you not only want to visit but will find yourself returning to again and again.
Grian Chatten Live:
30th June – Rough Trade, Bristol SOLD OUT
2nd July – Night & Day, Manchester (re: Piccadilly Records) SOLD OUT
4th July – Resident Records, Brighton SOLD OUT
5th July – Rough Trade East, London SOLD OUT
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